Posted
by
CowboyNealon Thursday January 06, 2005 @08:04AM
from the jon-stewart-victorious dept.

blonde rser writes "Three months after Jon Stewart
appeared on (and lambasted) CNN's Crossfire the
Globe and Mail reports that CNN is dumping Tucker Carlson. It appears that Crossfire is being canceled and Carlson's contract is not being renewed. As to whether Stewart's opinion had any affect on the decision there is this quote from Jonathan Klein, CEO of CNN's US network:
'I guess I come down more firmly in the Jon Stewart camp.'"

In today's world of pundits, you don't need to have a background in hard news research and fact-checking. You just have to have an opinion and, preferably, a marketable personality. I'd like to see more seasoned journalists do news analysis, rather than people on all sides with their minds decided before they collect the facts to back their opinions up.

I agree with you completely. I take it a step in a different direction though, and would prefer a lot of people with questionable credentials coming to a conclusion on an issue. Something such as Slashdot mainly.

Takes your mind down more interesting paths and forces you to question things.

Was Carlson's personality something taht anyone could market though? Was he presented as an asshole to make it so that people from "the left" would watch to hope he gets his ass handed to him?

I'd like to see more seasoned journalists do news analysis, rather than people on all sides with their minds decided before they collect the facts to back their opinions up.

What seasoned journalist? You mean like Dan Rather who did SO MUCH research before this story [cbsnews.com]? Nearly all journalist today have their mind made up about an issue before they even do the research. Most of them only do the research to back up what they think is true and how it should be presented. What passes as journalism today

While I didn't agree with his opinions, he was, at one point, considered a journalist with some integrity. He did a fairly "warts and all" portrait of GWB some time before the 2000 election, which infuriated many Bush supporters for reporting on a joke Bush made about a woman on death row [google.com].

On a show like Crossfire, where the show encouraged partisanship to the point of absurdity on both sides, he really wasn't the right person. It's not a show for serious journalists, and Carlson, I felt, wanted at some po

I'm curious though. What's his background that earned him the spot on a show like Crossfire? He had to have done something that made him in the spotlight in some way before that I would assume?

Because he wears a bow tie? Let's not pretend that CNN is somehow objective in the arena of politics - this is the network that initially reported the Sandy Berger story leaving out the bit about him stuffing the papers in his pants and socks.

Tucker Carlson is the caricature of an American conservative and that su

In more ways than one- if Stewart ends up there- who is of an equal stature for Comedy Central to replace their fake news anchor with? Maybe Mo Rocha (sp? Don't remember his last name) or Candice Bergman, but there isn't anybody I can think of that would do as good of a job as Stewart has done with the fake news.

Too unbelieveable:-) At least Stewart is more believeable- and he even ADMITS that his news stories are fake (though it took me quite a while to realize what the studio audience of The Daily Show already knew: Whenever somebody is "live on location" it means that they are on the other side of the stage standing in front of a great big TV set showing the "location".)

The mainstream media? CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, NYT, Washington Post: all painfully center, who try so hard to be "objective" that they don't even report on facts any longer; they just report "both sides" of the story. Not surprising since all these organizations are owned by large cor

There is no question that Fox News leans to the right, but CNN centrist? Hardly!

The problem with modern American politics, on both sides of the issue, is that if you are on one of the extremes, you're so far from the other side that the center LOOKS like the other side. Talk to a left-wing tree hugger, and CNN is the right wing anti-immigrant hatred network. Talk to a right wingnut- and CNN becomes a bastion of liberal and socialist tendencies. Therefore CNN is indeed the center.

After spending an entire day watching news channels looking for bias (I'm bored an still on winter break), I've come to the conclusion that both CNN and Fox News are biased. However, I believe Fox is worse, because it's much more aggresive in its reporting. Wheras the bias on CNN is mostly word choice, Fox straight-up attacks people. For example, while they were analyzing the recent CBS scandal, their 'fun facts' were all negative. All of them had something to do with Dan Rather being punched or how he had

I wouldn't call Dobbs an "ex conservative" just yet. I think he's very conservative. I think what is probably confusing you is that he's very intelligent in his conservatism, and has an independent mind. Thus, he is not blindly pro big business nor blindly pro Bush.

He's not so much pro-worker as just plain old pro-American. Dobbs is one of the last hopes for American Conservatives against the gang of bandits that have usurped the name. I disagree with him on some things (his stance on illegal workers in th

What I meant is that from the extreme right wing- CNN looks like it has a liberal commie pinko bias, but in exactly the same way you think it has a conservative bias- subtlely. Lou Dobbs gets his jibes in against GWB- including the "all of his companies tanked" one- but especially on his grandfather's ties to Saudi Arabia and the Bin Laden family. Oddly enough, I never saw F911- I got my portion of it filtered through CNN.

Far more interesting I thought than the Cocaine story was a hiddle line in the orig

Where his stance on illegal and legal-but-unwise-visa-system workers is exactly what attracts him to me. Of course, I'm largely centerist myself- get yelled at on the left for my stance on abortion and the population implosion, get yelled at from the right on my stance that perhaps creating huge corporations is not exactly the best use of resources.

On another topic- it occured to me recently that for all of his kowtowing to big business, Bush fails to get their votes. Blue states have the largest busines

I'm a conservative and I absolutely hate that guy. He tries to defend Bush when there is no reason to defend him. I'm a conservative and Bush is an insane president with a socialist agenda. I suppose they only got Carlson on there to make conservatives look retarded.

You're either too far left to realize or too ignorant to understand that Bush is in no way a "hardcore capitalist". Bush has multiplied the size of the federal government, cheered on NAFTA and GATT and all those other "free trade" treaties which bring on yet more regulatory nonsense, redistributes wealth...the list goes on and on.

"free trade" treaties? Last time I checked these tree trade treaties allow the outsourcing to whichever country has the lowest standard of living and lack of employeement laws. The wealth gets redistributed - right back to those who have it.

I'd say that Bush absolutely is a hardcore capitalist. What he's not is a hardcore free-marketer, because he's really fond of corporate pork. It's capitalism as defined by "protect big business", basically a re-branded version of Reagans trickle-down economics.

Note where the increases the federal government actually are - it's not like he's pumping a ton of extra money into the FCC or the federal reserve or authoring bills for greated market regulation.

The term you're looking for is "state capitalism", which is what we have under Bush, which both "left" and "right" oppose ideologically, but which borrows from each of their worst abuses. That huge federal government collects $2T in taxes from people without the capitalist clout to avoid taxes. Then spends $2T in taxes on huge corporations with that clout. NAFTA and GATT are the ways that multinationals carry on that game on the regional and global scale. It's the same definition of "hardcore" in capitalism

socialist agenda? wtf have you been watching? Bush is the wet dream of hardcore capitalists.

I say hardcore capatalists hate him, stocks did poorly during his administrations. The economy at home is stagnant. He is starting trade wars with Canada, and pissing off the chinese. He's bankign all his economic futures on oil. The only people who have wet dreams about bush are the fundies, and thats because they don't have sex with anyone because god forbid they enjoy anything except tormenting others.

Actually, fascism is a government owned/controlled by corporations, though it is cloaked in the appearance of mutual cooperation to protect it from its victims. Mutual cooperation is just "Capitalism", American style (as opposed to, say, "Communism", Soviet style).

Okay, you have no clue what you're talking about. Bush is about as close to the opposite of a socialist that you can get. Reducing taxes and privitizing social security alone would disprove what you said, but his pro-capitalism tax/corporate agenda go even further. His backing of Medicare is about the only thing socialistic about him.

I mean, really, look at Canada or some European countries for much closer examples of socialism. We're nowhere close and getting further away.

You seem to imply that running a deficit means that he is socialist. That doesn't make any sense at all. Canada is running a budget surplus, and has been for years.

Government spending money is not socialism, that's what governments do. Otherwise, they wouldn't be of any use at all. Bush, however, is not spending it on social policies, he's burning it in the name of national defense, something that, no matter anyone's opinion, governments SHOULD spend money on. Just... not that much, and not so wastefully.

The federal government maybe, but here in Manitoba we keep electing these extremely left leaning NDP idiots who have no idea how to balance their budget.

Your analysis is only partially correct. We just keep electing idiots, period. Filmon and his "balanced budget" was just as crooked and artificial as Doer's is. One was "balancing" by (amongst other nutty things) basically removing all the government functions, remember "Filmon fridays?" (only a complete nutjob anarcho-libertartian could ever consider that

Government spending money is not socialism, that's what governments do. Otherwise, they wouldn't be of any use at all. Bush, however, is not spending it on social policies, he's burning it in the name of national defense, something that, no matter anyone's opinion, governments SHOULD spend money on. Just... not that much, and not so wastefully.

I don't think invading another country is spending on "defence". That would be called war mongering, and it would also be called a huge waste of tax payer monies th

No, when the government *owns* the means of production, *that* is socialism. Government expense on, say, advertising, is "state capitalism", like the behemoth state capitalism we have in the US. When the state capitalism is controlled by/for corporations, that's "fascism", even when it's cloaked in doublespeak like "National Socialism" (Nazism).

Cry me a river about the deficit. The Democrats didn't give a crap about the deficit before the Republican Congress and the Internet bubble erased it under Clinton, and now all of the sudden it's a big issue with them. Somehow. Magically. They sure didn't give a crap about it during the 1980s when they were in control of Congress.

And don't get me started on Senator Byrd... He's the biggest pork barrel spender EVER.

I'm more of a distributist than a socialist- but I find Pat Buchanon extremely scary. Here's a guy widely known as a fascist- and I even agree with him on his close the borders rhetoric (as a distributist with socialist tendencies, it just makes the resource distribution problems have a lot fewer variables if you limit outside interferance in your economy).

Pat's really not fascist in the least. What he is, is racist, and he doesn't do nearly a good enough job of covering this up. His other shortcoming, imho, is that he's an isolationist, but this is not disgraceful, so he need not hide it. And to his credit, I think we'd be better off now if Bush had been slightly more isolationist, as he said he would be when he first ran for election. (Of course, we know now that he went into office with Iraq on the agenda.)

Bush is just a liar- straight and outright. What I don't get is how after 4 years of screwing the little guy and promoting big business, he lost the election on Wall Street but won in Kansas? There's something awfully ass backwards about that- as the extreme "left" (and how did a bunch of eliteist wall street spend-$1000-on-an-omelette types end up the left wing anyway?!?!?) would put it, voting against their economic interests.

Actually, fascism is not a form of socialism. Parts of it were developed by former socialists, and contain some similar ideals, but there are also non-similar aspects. In fact, fascism has historically been opposed to socialism and communism. I suggest you read this [wikipedia.org], and more particularly, this part [wikipedia.org] of that article. A quote:

While certain types of socialism may superficially appear to be similar to fascism, it should be noted that the two ideologies clash violently on many issues. The role of the state, fo

Crossfire's purpose is to make Ted Turner more money. That's CNN's purpose. That's about all news' purpose. That's why pretty much all news channels have gotten so horrible over the years. The only news on the television that isn't a sensationalistic joke is Fox News. Fox News, unfortunately, is just as bad or worse because it's purpose is to bring right-wing views and opnions to the people.

If the CEO of CNN really thought what he said he thought, CNN USA would look very different. I first thought their terrible and deliberately distorted news coverage had to do with their incompetence (or lack of resources). But this isn't true. I've spent a few days watching CNN Europe, and I have to tell you that it is a far better news channel. They actually do balanced and interesting stories, and are generally much less Tucker-Carlson-like. So the crap they're brodcasting into the USA is deliberately dumbed down. They actually have less-dumbed-down versions of all their big stories, but they just don't broadcast them in North America.

I saw Jon Stewart on Crossfire and from what I could gather from his rant, he objected to the institution of Republicans and Democrats yelling slogans from their talking points list, and pretending it's debate... and then pretending that reports like "Democrats claim X; Republicans claim Y" is news. So what if Crossfire is over. Everything that JS freaked out about is absolutely at the foundation of the way CNN reports. Crossfire is just reveals that formula in an especially naked way. So I don't understand how somebody could agree with JS and still be CEO of CNN-USA.

So the crap they're brodcasting into the USA is deliberately dumbed down.

Networks will only broadcast what the public want.

When it comes to news, from what the outside world sees, the American public (the majority thereof, which I suspect (nay, hope) does not include yourself, or many/.ers) happens to want dumbed down news.

They want flag waving sound bites, heaven knows they don't want to be made to think about stuff, or told stuff about "some foreigners who don't live here", just force fed the top sto

> the American public (the majority thereof [...]) happens to want dumbed down news.

I wouldn't say the majority, but a sizeable portion. That would explain why Fox News is popular, but not THAT popular. There's a certain segment of the population that cannot stomach criticism of anything American, and unfortunately since the current administration is part of it, this segment gets over-targetted by the mainstream media.

There's a certain segment of the population that cannot stomach criticism of anything American, and unfortunately since the current administration is part of it, this segment gets over-targetted by the mainstream media.

this segment is also the dumbest and mostly easily influenced by advertising. Thus their worth the most tot he networks. They all naively beleive maxdonalds hamburgers are the best, that more GHZ means more performance, that american automobiles are just great, and all muslims are baby eati

I sort of resent the attitude that Americans just want crap and CNN is just giving them what they want. It may be true that some Americans want crap. But I dispute the notion that we all do, or even the demographically meaningful ones do. Aren't the crap-consumers watching The Simple Life instead of CNN to begin with?

News didn't used to be like this, and I don't think it's *all* because Americans just started demanding more crap. I have my own political positions, but I want honest conservative guests

In the US the press needs to keep the political parties happy with them. If not they might lose their Air Force One press pass and get over looked during press event question periods. It may or may not actually happen, however that isn't the point.

The important information you're missing is that the CEO of CNN who said that was only recently (end of November) appointed CEO of CNN. So, in fact, the evidence (cancelling of crossfire & some other shows) suggests that he really does think what he said he thinks.

I don't believe CNN's CEO agreed with Jon. It was probably more the cynical Americans which agreed with Jon and their viewership dropped. Or more appropriately, maybe he was tired of looking like a fool at the posh CEO gatherings. Whispers behind his back, "It was his decision to promote Crossfire, and now America is laughing at him. Where's my martini?"

Come on, they argue the entire time on the show. It's the polical "Seinfeld". The show is about nothing, discusses nothing, and at the end of the sho

Now if he could just prevail on Comedy Central's web monkeys to make the Daily Show's web site work.

We've decided it's time to drop our cable service, because we've found so little that's worth watching on all those channels, so why pay for something that we aren't using? One major exception was the Daily Show, which was the best place to find accurate coverage of the recent American elections. For "straight" news, TV is now pretty much useless, and a

tucker stood in for aaron on his regular newsnight program last week. tucker just read the news very quickly (totally sans feeling) and was the worst substitute they could have chosen! not soft spoken, not sensitive, not caring in the least.

that guy should NOT be put in front of public. he's just a moran in outdated garb.

Carville always made him his bitch. Someone like Ann Coulter would have made a better commentator. I'm shedding no tears for the milqetoast clown.

As for CNN canceling crossfire, so what? It was innovative in its day, but its day is over. It had gotten boring. No one ever debated anymore, just slung their party-line slogans around. Jon Stewart's appearance was just an excuse (and a lousy excuse, at that. What a self-rightous diatribe THAT was).

Has anyone watched Tucker's PBS Show [pbs.org]? Personally I don't see why people are hating on Tucker so bad. I get the impression that Novak actually believes the shit he spews, and that Tucker is spewing the shit for the purpose of debate, playing devil's advocate perhaps. In my opinion, the only time Crossfire was ever tolerable was when it was Begala vs. Carlson. Mostly because Begala is easier on the eyes than Carville.

Crossfire was pretty dumbass, but i found it interesting because it was a daily testing gr

This was the funny (yet sad) part about Jon Stewart's appearance on Crossfire. He clearly admits that his show is a comedy show, duh its on a network called Comedy Central. People don't tune into his show to become informed on the news, they tune in to laugh.

Crossfire does attempt to be a news show and does a terrible job at it. They're on CNN, a news network that people turn on to learn about the news. Go figure?

Stewart was attacked for doing a bad job or reporting the news on his comedy show? I

Politics is not really news. It's gossip. And this is what Crossfire was tasked with covering, leaving the real news to Wolf Blitzer.

Of course Politics is news.

Crossfire only treated it as gossip because that is the material that best suited the format they had devolved to.

I would hope you would be able to see what I think is blatently obvious in that the Daily Show is NOT a news show. No person on that show is a journalist. It's sole purpose is entertainment. In my opinion, if Stewart wants to become a

On what do you base your claim that Stewart's viewers are better informed than those that view CNN and Fox? That's an absolutly assinine statement considering that at best The Daily Show covers maybe 3 stories a night and CNN and Fox are 24 hour networks that cover hundreds of stories every day. Their biases may be debatable, but you cannot reasonaby suggest that the Daily Show is somehow more informative than a 24 hours news network. And I say again, The Daily Show has not and will not touch the tsunami st

I find it troubling that you and many others are giving Stewart and the Daily Show undue journalistic credit. It's very funny, I give you that. And it is informative, but IT IS NOT JOURNALISM. IT IS COMEDY.

Why do you believe that the two cannot exist together?

It is very easy to present a news story and mock the individuals at the same time.

I'm not suggesting that Crossfire was journalism, either. I stand by my statement that it was mostly a g

And journalism is withholding opinions and reporting facts without bias. Putting aside any political bias the Daily Show might have, they only report news stories that are funny. Which, again, is not wrong.. but if everything they report has to end with a punchline, then they are only reporting a small fraction of the total story.

And journalism is withholding opinions and reporting facts without bias. Putting aside any political bias the Daily Show might have, they only report news stories that are funny. Which, again, is not wrong.. but if everything they report has to end with a punchline, then they are only reporting a small fraction of the total story.

Your first assertion is impossible, anything they report is simply their opinion of what went on.

I know. Unlike Carville, Begala has not done such stunts as fire deathbeams from his wand into the audience screaming "Due, muggle scum!", reveal that his face was on the back of the head of a stuttering professor, and drinking unicorn's blood on live TV.

Plus, Crossfire and perhaps the McLaughlin Group are the only truly non-partisan politics shows. Both sides get equal time.

Equal time does not mean non-partisan. If I gave 15 min to a fundementalist aryan nations activist and then 15 min to Ralph Nader, I may have given equal time but I've weighted the "debate" so much to the left that it's rediculous. Crossfire did this weighting to the right. Pitting smart and eloquent right wingers against inarticulate lefties who were sometimes flakes. this weighted t

You almost had it, but you dropped it or maybe you have it but weren't able to express it. Crossfire wasn't non-partisan because it gave equal time to "both sides". At best, we can call it "bipartisan" (although the meaning here is different than what we normally think of as bipartisan), because it was pitting two very narrow opposing viewpoints against each other. There was no examination of issues, and no debate beyond some sort of talking-points-punch-and-judy show.

From what I gather, this is a total misunderstanding of what Jon Stewart was trying to say. As I understood it, he was trying to say that the problem is that we refuse to have real debate. crossfire, as Jon sees it (so I think), engages in theatre, not debate. The criticism of the media is that they fake being even handed, and by doing so don't actually provide meaningful analysis. The interpretation that debate in all forms should go is way off. Debating an issue and reading the party-line propaganda are two completely different things.

Thanks for the pointer! Now I know what to tune in to in lieu of CNN from now on.

Wolf Blitzer used to be respectable, but he's turned into something of a clown. His coverage of this year's Presidential Election was a career low for him, IMHO. Larry King has slowly become more and more dweebish over the last couple of decades. Watching the banter between Larry and Blitzer that November evening, discussing "but what if this?" and "but what if that?" just made me laugh. Aaron Brown is as dumb as my left nut.

If you like his provocative stuff, you will be disappointed. I have seen his PBS show a few times -- it is on opposite the early morning infomercials here. And on his PBS show he is very well behaved, none of the imflammatory stuff that many of his fans love.

I disagreed with him. I thought Stewart made some good points. But I wish him well. He was capable of acknowledging when his debating opponents made a good point -- selectively. Which was not

I guess hearing opinions you disagree with is just too much to take, isn't it?

I know, I'm feeding the troll. But I don't have a problem with opinions I disagree with. I have a problem when opinions become news. News should be about reporting facts, investigating, digging for information, and expert analysis. When it becomes opinion from one party line or from two party lines, both are terrible.